Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

—Those dying generations—at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

I Saw Three Cities, 1944, Kay Sage, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton  / Photograph by Bruce M. White

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

Byzantine Mosaic, Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, Western Turkey

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Golden Bird, 1919-20 (Base c. 1922) , Constaintin Brancusi, The Art Institute, Chicago, IL

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

~   by W. B. Yeats

I chose to use the art of the Byzantine Empire with more modern art so there was a mix of styles. When I first saw the "Golden Bird" sculpture by Constaintin Brancusi I can honestly say I had mixed feelings about whether I liked it or not. Over the years the elegance and grace of the sculpture has captured my heart.

Yeats was using an imaginative journey through the tangible act of sailing to describe the internal act of reconciliation of becoming an old man and how to maintain a use in a world of younger men. This is a common process people go through in their lives, attempting to reconcile how to be a contributing member of society when you feel "overthrown" or perceive yourself to be unneeded. Yeats makes the journey of the poem toward the sages and away from youth. This description is not far from what truly happens when people look inside themselves at a point in life when they are leaving their "youth" behind and choose to advance their worth by moving toward increased knowledge and the sharing of knowledge.

In the first stanza Yeats refers to the birds in relation to youth when he wrote "In one another's arms, birds in the trees / —Those dying generations—at their song" So it is no surprise that in the fourth stanza Yeats refers to a bird "Or set upon a golden bough to sing"which is important because he has stated once his body is consumed by the fire he wanted to be "Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing" implying that he wanted to be a 'golden bird' on a golden bough and that 'golden bird' being outside of nature never dies.

It is important to note that the use of Byzantine was deliberate as the Byzantine arts and culture were rich with fine arts, skilled craftsman, beautiful and elaborate architectures and mosaics. The journey to Byzantium was a journey toward the sages of the arts as much as the mind.

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Byzantine [bɪˈzænˌtaɪn -ˌtiːn baɪ- ˈbɪzənˌtiːn -ˌtaɪn]

adj

3. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Art Terms) of or relating to the highly coloured stylized form of religious art developed in the Byzantine Empire

4. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Architecture) of or relating to the style of architecture developed in the Byzantine Empire, characterized by massive domes with square bases, rounded arches, spires and minarets, and the extensive use of mosaics.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20310#sthash.vlFkaoMA.dpuf

The Man With the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens with Picasso's The Old Guitarist 1903/04

The Old Guitarist, 1903/04, Oil on Panel, Pablo Picasso, The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA

The Man With The Blue Guitar

One

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said to him, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar,
Of things exactly as they are."

Two

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If a serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

Three

A tune beyond us as we are,
Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;

Ourselves in tune as if in space,
Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and only the place
As you play them on the blue guitar,
Placed, so, beyond the compass of change,
Perceived in a final atmosphere;

For a moment final, in the way
The thinking of art seems final when

The thinking of god is smoky dew.
The tune is space. The blue guitar

Becomes the place of things as they are,
A composing of senses of the guitar.

Four

Tom-tom c'est moi. The blue guitar
And I are one. The orchestra

Fills the high hall with shuffling men
High as the hall. The whirling noise

Of a multitude dwindles, all said,
To his breath that lies awake at night.

I know that timid breathing. Where
Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentarily declares

Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.

~Wallace Stevens

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Stevens had remarked: "To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems."  He was inspired by Picasso's quote that a painting is 'une somme de destructions' (a sum of destructions).